With the ever greater reliance on fuel products for powering various motors, including those used in all forms of transport, attention has, for many years, been focused on attempts to increase fuel efficiency, and this has particularly been true in the case of road vehicles, including both domestic vehicles such as cars, and commercial vehicles, for example vans and lorries. Typically, such fuel additives are designed to provide improvements in terms of various aspects of vehicle performance including, for example, increased fuel efficiency—and thereby lower overall fuel costs—lower emissions, cleaner fuel injectors and increased protection against bacterial contamination of fuel and fuel systems.
In the great majority of cases, these vehicles are powered by means of either unleaded petrol or diesel fuel. However, as is well known, these two fuels are completely incompatible, and the use of one of these fuels is not possible in an engine designed to be powered by the other fuel. In fact, in such cases, addition of the incorrect fuel to a vehicle would result in serious damage to the engine. Consequently, as an additional precaution designed to prevent addition of the wrong fuel to an engine, the entry orifices of fuel tanks, which are generally circular in cross-section, are designed to have different diameters dependent on whether the associated engine is a petrol or diesel engine, and the fuel dispenser nozzles intended to dispense the different fuels are also usually circular in cross-section, and have correspondingly different diameters, so that a nozzle intended to dispense petrol is designed to fit snugly into the entry orifice of the fuel tank of a petrol engine, whilst a nozzle for diesel correspondingly provides a neat fit into the entry orifice of a diesel tank. Thus, diesel dispenser nozzles and the entry orifices of fuel tanks of diesel engines are of significantly greater diameter than petrol dispenser nozzles and the entry orifices of fuel tanks of petrol engines.
Naturally, in view of the major differences between petrol and diesel fuel, different additives have been developed for use in conjunction with the different fuels, so that the range of additives which is available for addition to petrol is fundamentally quite different to that which is supplied for use in diesel fuel. Clearly, therefore, it is important that the two different ranges of products should not be confused, since the use of petrol additives in diesel fuel, or vice versa, would be highly undesirable, with regard to both performance and potential damage to the engine.
In certain instances, performance additives are added to fuel before it is dispensed into a vehicle. However, more commonly, the additive is added to the fuel tank of a vehicle immediately prior to or immediately after dispensing fuel into the vehicle. In other words, the additive is added separately to the fuel tank of a vehicle, typically prior to addition of the fuel to the tank. Naturally, when the vehicle concerned is a road vehicle, such as a car, van or lorry, addition of the additive will usually be carried out by the vehicle owner, who will probably also be the driver. For practical purposes, the additives are usually supplied in conveniently sized containers, such as bottles, so that the vehicle owner/driver can easily make the addition to the fuel tank.
Naturally, the fuel additive containers are adapted such that addition to a fuel tank is a straightforward operation that can be speedily completed. For this reason, the containers are usually provided with a dispensing means which is generally in the form of a dispensing nozzle, which can be inserted into the mouth of the relevant fuel tank.
Clearly, however, for the reasons discussed above, the dispensing nozzle of a container must be suitable for insertion into the entry orifice of the particular fuel tank for which the additive is intended. Thus, for a petrol additive, the nozzle is required to fit the entry of the fuel tank of a petrol engine whilst, in the case of a diesel additive, the nozzle is required to be suitable for the larger entry orifice of the fuel tank of a diesel engine.
Previously, it has generally been the case that containers provided with nozzles designed to fit the narrower entry orifices of fuel tanks of petrol engines have also been used in conjunction with the larger entry orifices of the fuel tanks of diesel engines, since these nozzles were able to fit each of these tanks. However, in recent years, primarily motivated by a desire to prevent the accidental filling of diesel tanks with petrol using the narrower fuel dispenser nozzles of petrol pumps, vehicle manufacturers have provided the entry orifices of diesel tanks with barrier mechanisms adapted to close off these orifices at all times other than when fuel or additives are being introduced into the tank.
When filling the tank, these barrier mechanisms may only be activated by nozzles of essentially the same external diameter as the entry orifice, so that the use of nozzles designed for the introduction of petrol and petrol additives is prevented, since these are of smaller diameter, and the risk of potential damage to the engine as a consequence of the use of incorrect fuel or fuel additives is thereby substantially eliminated.
Clearly, in such cases, where these barrier mechanisms are in place, it would not be possible to use fuel additive dispensers which are designed for use in conjunction with petrol engines in order to add diesel additive to the fuel tank of a diesel engine, and a dispenser with a larger diameter nozzle would be required. Thus, there is a need for containers to be provided which incorporate dispensing nozzles which are adapted so as to neatly fit the entry orifices of the respective fuel tanks. It is this requirement which the present invention seeks to address.
The simplest approach to the alleviation of this situation would necessitate the production of different containers for the different additives for petrol and diesel, with containers intended for use with diesel additives requiring to be provided with dispensing means having a greater diameter than those designed for use with petrol additives. This, however, would require the production of containers of different dimensions for the two different additives, which would clearly have disadvantages in terms of tooling requirements and efficiency of production. The present inventors have also sought to address this issue, and have achieved this by the provision of a single container which may be used for dispensing either petrol or diesel additives. This has simplified the position in respect of tooling requirements and processes for the production of these containers, since the manufacturers have been able to concentrate on the production of a single design of container with dual uses.